Disability service providers across Victoria want the dire lack of funding in the sector given more attention from the major political parties ahead of next week's state election. The sector says the demand is so great, people are being forced to give up their disabled children in desperation. The rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme will provide much needed help, but is not expected to be fully implemented for another four to five years.

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ELEANOR HALL: To the heartbreaking situation in rural Victoria, where parents are giving up their disabled children to foster homes because they don't have enough support to care for them.

Disability service providers across Victoria are warning of the dire lack of funding in the sector.

They say the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) will provide much needed help, but it is not until it is fully implemented and that will take another four to five years.

Lily Partland has this report from Ballarat.

LILY PARTLAND: At 11 years of age, Erin Kidd has the cognitive ability of a nine month old baby.

MICHELLE KIDD: She is totally physically disabled, she has around 50 seizures every single day of her life.

There is no projected outcome or life expectancy predicted for Erin. We just have to take each day as it comes.

LILY PARTLAND: Until last year, Michelle Kidd was her daughter's fulltime carer.

MICHELLE KIDD: She's beautiful, she's a very giggly little girl but she needs to be fed, she's incontinent, she cannot talk, so she needs help with every single aspect of her life.

LILY PARTLAND: Ms Kidd says she had to constantly fight to get the support Erin needed.

The family reached breaking point when her husband had a serious accident.

MICHELLE KIDD: We had been asking and asking for help and we realised that we were not going to get help, that we were not going to be supported in the way we needed to to keep our family together.

LILY PARTLAND: Ms Kidd says she then made the hardest decision of her life.

She told Erin's case manager they could no longer cope and two weeks later her daughter was placed in emergency accommodation.

Erin now lives in shared accommodation with three other children.

MICHELLE KIDD: That was the worst day of our life. It was the hardest thing to have to do but we knew that we had no other option, but it certainly doesn't mean we love her any less.

LILY PARTLAND: She says more support, particularly in the form of respite, may have helped them avoid that outcome.

MICHELLE KIDD: We would have been able to re-coup and refresh and to be able to have a rest.

LILY PARTLAND: Marianne Hubbard is the chief executive of Pinarc Disability Services, which supports around 850 families in the Ballarat region.

She says the Kidd family situation is not unusual.

MARIANNE HUBBARD: We see directly that the lack of respite opportunities for families makes all the difference. It definitely is one of the biggest issues.

LILY PARTLAND: Ms Hubbard says there is a lack of emergency accommodation available for people with disabilities, particularly in the regions.

She says children who are relinquished sometimes end up with carers in motel rooms until longer term solutions are found.

MARIANNE HUBBARD: We have been looking at supporting around one family a month facing this and there would be another number of families who are flagging that they're feeling that increased pressure.

LILY PARTLAND: She says the amount of funding required to provide respite support pales in comparison to the cost of providing long term emergency accommodation.

MARIANNE HUBBARD: Say if you had $50,000 for one family and you're looking at 12 families it really isn't that much money.

That sort of money can make a fairly good impact in providing some respite.

LILY PARTLAND: She says volunteer programs, where other families offer to care for a child every second weekend provide, even better value for money.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is providing significant financial support for disability services in the launch site area of Barwon, but other areas simply can't cope with the demand.

James O'Brien is the Victorian manager of the peak body National Disability Services. He says the NDIS can't be rolled out quickly enough.

JAMES O'BRIEN: We've surveyed our members who are disability service providers right across Victoria and what the survey is showing is that there is real stress and strain on the system.

The official waiting lists are continuing to grow, so a bit up over 10 per cent in the last 12 months. That means there's over 4,300 Victorians who are waiting for access to vital disability services.

Until the NDIS arrives there's got to be ongoing state government investment to provide some support to people with a disability in the interim period.

LILY PARTLAND: In a statement, a spokesperson for the Minister for Disability Services, Mary Wooldridge, said a re-elected Coalition Government would invest $18 million for 400,000 additional hours of community-based respite.

But Labor is yet to release its policy on disability.

But no matter who is elected next week, any additional support would arrive too late for the Kidd family.

Michelle Kidd's hope now is that her daughter will move out of her current housing and in with a local foster family who would be given the funding to care for Erin.

MICHELLE KIDD: DHS (Department of Human Services) were not in the position to help us but they can help a foster family, which seems totally ironic, but if it means that Erin is safe and that she is going to be given all the help and care that she deserves, that's the most important thing.